


Predators and Prey

by stellacadente



Series: What Came Before [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Animal Death, Backstory, Gen, Hunters & Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-07 11:25:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8799052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellacadente/pseuds/stellacadente
Summary: Future Sith Warrior Xhareen Nah-garesh makes her first kill





	

The mist moved upward, fast enough that it caught Xhareen off her guard, as though the giants her father sang about were real, and one of them had just taken in a giant-sized breath. She thanked the invisible giant, because now she could see the four khori deer at the edge of the forest. They were cautious too, not of giants, but of the small sapiens who came here to hunt them. The doe nudged her buck and the family moved in unison back behind the tree line.

That’s when Xhareen first felt it. It started with a slight tingle beneath the skin of her arms. She shifted noiselessly in the shelter she’d built over the past week to hide her from sight, hoping this moment would come. She waited for a sign, a shimmer in the leafy undergrowth and was not disappointed. The tingle beneath her skin, it was the Force telling her "It's time." She saw the black legs first, as the scrub wolf emerged from its own cover, the scent of fear from the deer luring it out, intoxicated.

In less time than she could have stated her next move in words, Xhareen struck, just as the wolf broke into a run. A quick “thwack” followed by a squeal, and the sound of four paws struggling through the leaves, and the deer ignored their previous caution and lit out across the open field.

Xhareen stood up, a smile on her face. She shouldered her bow, and pulled the knife the tanner had lent her from its sheath on her back. A grown man or woman could have easily worn it as a dagger from a waistband, but for Xhareen, it was her mighty sword. She’d need it to put the wolf down if the bow hadn’t finished its work by the time she got to the body.

As it hadn’t. Xhareen had been taught to ensure a quick kill, and she chided herself for hitting the wolf just off where its heart was. This was the first time she’d hit one, though, and she was at least proud of that. She'd pierced it through the shoulder, and that's what kept it on the ground. Scrub wolves were canny hunters and even though it was in pain, it kept nearly silent. She stood over the animal, and only then could she hear it gasping and snarling. It knew it was beaten, but it was not going to betray its kind with mewling or any last-ditch attacks upon its victor.

She approached it from behind, and in a swift motion, grabbed its head and drew the knife across the near-white fur of its throat. She tilted the head so the blood would flow into the ground and not onto the coat. “Blood belongs to the earth, Xhareen,” the tanner told her. Within a moment, the wolf grew quiet and its body was limp. Xhareen dragged it closer to her shelter. She knew she was alone in the forest at this time of morning, but she wasn’t going to turn her back on a legitimate kill. This was her triumph. Now to get her claim.

She’d never be able to drag the animal back to the edge of town where the tanner’s shop was, much less carry it, so she quickly assembled the wood poles and nerf hide she’d stowed here, lacing them as she’d been shown with the sinew string, and built a travois. She lashed the wolf’s carcass to the nerf hide, then attached the lace around the poles to the harness she wore around her midsection and began the long walk across the fields back toward town.

When she got within earshot, she whistled as she’d always done before. The tanner’s wife appeared out of the back door of their living quarters, and motioned her to the shop in the back. People who lived outside of town might have holo transmitters inside and speeders out front, but they lived simply otherwise. The Empire had decreed certain “growth inhibitors” for alien colony worlds like this one, though the adults complained that that mostly meant no blasters and no advanced drive research, whatever that was. Xhareen remembered every word they said, even if she didn’t understand them. 

The tanner came out of the shed, a grin as wide as the hungry wolf’s had been. Xhareen helped him free the wolf. “It’s a small one, but it looks old enough, girl. So good on you!” He picked it up easily and Xhareen followed him into the shed, where she’d spent most of her free time. Her parents thought she haunted the local park lands near her home, on the edge of the town but still safely within its borders. They probably weren’t even awake yet, and they wouldn’t even notice she was out. Or so she hoped.

She thought her mother, the more Force sensitive of her parents, might be figuring out Xhareen’s secret obsession, since her collection of leaves and twigs and rocks and small animal parts had grown to include flora and fauna not necessarily found within the park borders. Maybe she’d be found out now, because she had no intention of turning down the tanner when he proffered the wolf’s two canine teeth as partial payment.

He’d pay part of the bounty he would receive in credits to her, as he always did. It had been a warm winter, just as last year had been, and the far woods had both an abundance of predators as well as prey. The farmers were always wary when the black-legged, brown-furred scrub wolves bred freely because they knew that any upcoming drought or harsh winter would send them out of the woods and into their fields. Another tenet of the growth inhibitor pact with the Empire prevented any kind of terra-forming or large-scale weather mod technology as well. But that was fine with most of the inhabitants, especially the Miraluka, like Xhareen’s family. Even though they lived with copious technology, and their Force gift was nearly unanimous, they still believed the Force kept them connected to the natural world around them.

Xhareen pulled her cred stick from around her neck. The tanner picked up his data pad and tapped a few keys; when her stick chirped with a successful credit transfer, she put it back under her tunic.

“Good work today. For a kid, anyway,” the tanner called as she walked out of the shed.

“I’m not a kid anymore!”

The tanner smiled, shook his head. The credits spent the same, no matter how small the hunter.

Xhareen made good time getting back to town. She used her mother’s security code to enter the perimeter and disable the window alarms. She climbed up the tree outside her bedroom and slipped silently back inside, then reset the alarms with the programmed datapad she’d gotten in exchange for the fish she’d caught for her friend’s parents. Her own parents thought it was one discarded by the school, though they knew their daughter was rather skilled in the art of bartering and was always quietly storing her latest acquisitions in her bedroom.

She’d have to find some place to hide the teeth, at least until she could come up with a cover story for what she’d traded for them. Her parents didn’t understand hunting, or why Xhareen had to do it. They knew nothing about the growing credit account she had from selling her kills; that was her secret with Nama and Nama never told on her. Maybe Nama could hold onto the teeth for a while.

But there’d be no need for covert activities today. Today was a Big Day. Her parents would be up soon, preparing for the festivities, since today was Xhareen’s birthday. 

Yep, it was official. Today she was no longer a child.

She was six years old.

**Author's Note:**

> "Nama" is headcanon Miralukan for maternal grandmother


End file.
